Better Than It Sounds/Anime and Manga A-C

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Japanese cartoons are weird, man! Though I may be on to something with that blue hair.
—Strong Bad, Strong Bad Email #57, "japanese cartoon"

The Japanese know a thing or two about making odd-sounding ideas work. After all, they make real odd ideas work all the time.

Please sort new titles alphabetically by the English release title into the appropriate sub-pages to avoid duplicate entries.

#

  • 07-Ghost: An amnesiac royal gets mixed up with dead bishie bishops after bad dreams make him flee a military academy and his best friend turns into a developmentally delayed mascot character.
  • 20th Century Boys: For some people, there is no life after middle school. Apocalypse ensues.
  • 3x3 Eyes: Immortal dies repeatedly in increasingly bloody, hilarious ways.
  • 666 Satan (manga) : A kid with odd eyes and hair wants to Take Over the World armed only with a boomerang and Satan.

A

B

  • B Gata H Kei: Virgin tries to get laid. She's not very good at it.
  • B't X: A guy takes a break from protecting Athena to fly around in a desert on a mechanical pony. Lots of people disapprove.
  • Baccano!!: A number of people aboard a train find they have conflicting interests. An old man looks for friends he shared a drink with a long time ago.
    • Alternately: A genius little girl and a man try to solve a mystery about a train.
      • Or in joke form: A gang, a cult, and the Chicago Mafia walk onto a train one day...
  • Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu: The lowest tier class in high-school battles other classes using summoned beings whose power is determined by test grades in order to get better supplies.
    • Alternately: Kids use the powers of studying to overcome bullies.
  • Bakemonogatari: Japanese teenagers and their homeless friend fight monsters TALK. A LOT.
    • Or: Teenage girl falls in love with an enigmatic vampire after he saves her life.
    • Alternatively: Sayonara, Araragi-kun.
  • Bakuman｡: An artist and his girlfriend avoid talking to each other.
    • Or, a manga about two kids drawing manga.
  • Bamboo Blade: Kendo instructor decides to settle a year-old bet by fielding an all-girl squad.
  • Bartender: He tends a bar.
    • Alternately: Alcohol solves everything.
  • Basilisk: Romeo and Juliet... with ninja!
  • Basquash: God created basketball.
  • Batman: Gotham Night: Anime adaptation of a comic hero, made 60 years after the hero's debut.
  • Battle Athletes: Girls train and compete for extreme Olympics, in Space.
  • Beauty Pop: Teenage hairstylists compete with one another.
  • Beck: A shy guy joins a band.
  • Beelzebub (manga): A juvenile delinquent becomes the unwilling father of an infant demon prince and teaches him how to be a real man. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Ben-To: Students having all out wars for half-priced lunchboxes.
  • Berserk: A big guy with an unfortunate tattoo tries to get therapy for the girlfriend who hates him after his pretty-haired ex-best friend sells out the world for a makeover and a spiffy new Batman outfit.
  • Best Student Council: A girl whose best friend is a puppet dabbles in school politics.
  • Beyblade: An evil organization attempts to take over the world using spinning tops. It's Serious Business.
  • Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian: A veteran and a little girl search for overdue library books.
  • The Big O: What if Bruce Wayne had a giant robot? Has surprisingly little to do with orgasms.
    • Or: A bunch of amnesiacs, one of whom thinks he's Batman, run around destroying a city with giant robots. Eventually revealed to be inconsequential.
    • Or: A man who looks like Bruce Wayne, who's actually a tomato, uses a Humongous Mecha named after an orgasm to fight other giant robots who aren't as suggestively named.
  • Binbou Shimai Monogatari: Two underage sisters live together in a run-down apartment and have to get by on their own. They love each other a lot.
  • Birdy the Mighty: A policewoman with Bizarre Alien Biology from space meets Ordinary High School Student and does Fusion Dance with him. They Fight Crime.
  • Black Butler: An effeminate boy sells his soul for a highly skilled butler.
  • Black Cat: A Technical Pacifist tries to stay out of a war between two groups of Well Intentioned Extremists. The Anime adds a subplot where he talks of the less sympathetic Extremist group's leader entirely in death threats for half the series.
  • Black Jack: A Tall, Dark and Snarky man and his Frankensteinian creation charge astronomical sums of money to cut people open.
  • Black Lagoon: A salary-man quits his job to run errands for and with unstable foreigners who frequently try to kill him. He still dresses like a salary-man, though.
  • |Black Rock Shooter: Two girls befriend each other in freshman year but drift apart. Meanwhile, their alternate universe counterparts try to kill each other. Les Yay references ensue.
    • For the TV series: Schoolgirl angst spawns a parallel dimension of nonstop violence. The therapist approves.
  • Blade of the Immortal: A swordsman with internal parasites gets hired by a plucky orphan to kill "bad people."
  • Blame!: An untalkative, millennia-old, amnesiac robot meanders around a mostly abandoned space station looking for genes.
  • Bleach: Dead people fight other dead people but almost never to the death.
    • Or: Wannabe fashion designer (and possible Chessmaster and troper) shows off. Title has little to do with plot.
    • Bleach: Diamond Dust Rebellion: Secondary White-Haired Pretty Boy character angsts for 90 minutes.
    • Bleach: Fade To Black: Two siblings try to destroy the ruling class because a childhood friend can't remember their names.
    • Bleach: Hell Verse: Teen and his dead friends go to Hell to find a sister. Leads to massive trolling.
  • Blood Plus: A teenage girl teams up with a cellist and a giant-revolver-wielding David Bowie to fight vampires.
    • Or: A teenaged girl has to keep her sister from getting pregnant.
    • Or: A teenage pop idol does horrible things at her manager's insistence.
    • Or: Two vampires carry out a campaign of genocide.
  • Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan: A high school Lolicon must change his ways and his destiny, or else be murdered horribly. He still gets murdered horribly, however.
  • Blue Comet SPT Layzner: A Five-Token Band of teenagers goes on a field trip to learn about technology, astronomy and politics.
  • Blue Drop: An alien battleship captain pretends to be a Schoolgirl Lesbians and seduces a sociopath home-ed while rehearsing a School Play with her.
  • Blue Exorcist: Satan's son resolves to kill his father by going to high school.
  • Blue Seed: A girl prone to exposing her underwear, a snarky half-plant guy and a bunch of gun-wielding True Companions try to save humanity from Japanese mythology.
  • Blue Submarine No. 6: A well intentioned extremist tries to teach the world a lesson in tolerance by drowning its entire population.
  • Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo: Hair-brained (and hair-nosed) hero fights personifications of premature baldness.
  • Boku no Pico: A pre-pubescent boy is precocious.
    • Pico to Chico: Two pre-pubescent boys are precocious.
    • Pico x Coco x Chico: Three pre-pubescent boys are precocious.
  • Bokurano: Fifteen messed-up children play a fun game with Humongous Mecha. Neon Genesis Evangelion is happy and optimistic by comparison.
    • Or: Kids on summer camp decide to play a game. The adults think they should stop.
  • The Borrower Arrietty (Studio Ghibli): A small-scale burglar and his family consider moving to a less dangerous neighborhood after catching their daughter giving some sugar to the boy upstairs.
  • Boukun Tyrano San: A male T-Rex dies and is reincarnated 60 million years later as a high school girl; he's not happy at all.
  • Brain Powerd: Giant organic monster makes organic robots that fight other organic robots so it can absorb all organic energy on Earth. An organic submarine fights this. There are lots and lots of organic parental issues.
  • Bremen: An omnilingual clone of Jesus teams up with a guitarist with a mohawk, a car enthusiast bassist, and a transgendered dominatrix drummer to form a band. They beat the living shit out of those who get in their way.
    • Or: Amnesiac guy tries to find his girlfriend. Instead, he gets a rockband.
  • Bubblegum Crisis: An Eccentric Millionaire, a Biker Babe, a Plucky Girl, and a Playful Hacker fight robots to 80s music.
  • Bunny Drop: A man adopts his aunt.
  • Burn Up Excess: Five pairs of breasts (and one guy) fight crime as a secret mercenary unit of the police.
  • Burst Angel: Four pairs of breasts female bounty hunters (and a guy who cooks for them) defend the defenseless in a Crapsack World brought on by the abolition of gun control.
  • Busou Renkin: Two boys go on life support and try to kill each other.

C

  • Candy Boy: A pair of fraternal twin sisters really like each other. Stuff happens.
  • C the Money And Soul of Possibility: Ordinary college student plays financial card games. It's more awesome than it sounds.
    • Or: Stock Market: The Anime. Definitely much better than it sounds.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura: A cute little girl navigates a world of very confusing and complex love relationships, while collecting cards in her spare time.
  • Castle in The Sky: Boy Meets Girl... more specifically, a girl on the run from pirates and a government agent who convinces the military to help him steal a necklace.
  • Casshern Sins: A Bishonen android walks the earth... what's left of it.
  • The Cat Returns: A girl rescues a cat and is rewarded by nearly being forced to marry him. She's eventually rescued by a magic lawn ornament, a talking crow, and a fat guy.
  • A Certain Magical Index: In a world where magic and esper powers are the norm, an Unlucky Everydude who may or may not be the protagonist of a gal-game goes through life by punching anomalies back to normal and bemoaning his misfortune.
  • Change 123: A girl with three fathers struggles with mental illness and finds two possible boyfriends.
  • Chintsubu a.k.a. Chinko no Tsubuyaki: A hilarious Yaoi manga whose title translates to "The Mutterings of the Penises." And this is meant to be taken literally.
  • Chi's Sweet Home: A kitten finds a home. That's it.
  • Chobits: Boy falls in love with a girl whose artificial body and overprotective sister ensure that they can never have sex.
  • Chocolate Underground: A totalitarian regime takes the Atkins diet too far.
  • Chocotto Sister: Santa gives a boy a little sister for Christmas. She really loves him in return.
  • Chrono Crusade: A monster uses a watch to suck away a girl's soul. He may love her. Together, They Fight Demons.
  • CLAMP School Detectives: An Absurdly Powerful Student Council solves mysteries in its spare time.
    • Who wears short shorts? They wear short shorts.
  • Clannad: A delinquent meets the sickly daughter of Kamina and Belldandy, and they (re)start a club with his best friend and some other girls.
    • Or: A pair of high school students meet a ghost who hands out carvings of echinoderms; they decide to help.
    • Season 2: Nothing goes right for the delinquent. Ever. Once his life is thoroughly obliterated, a junk robot in a different world makes everything better.
  • Claymore: A surly woman with a giant sword wanders around a laboratory seeking revenge on a little girl.
  • Code Geass: Convoluted Love Dodecahedron develops between British teenagers attending high school in Japan; the fate of the world hangs in the balance.
    • Or: Terrorist takes over the world with mind control. Pizza is involved.
    • Or: Self-Made Orphan learns about the power of sacrifice.
    • Or: High school student starts World War III to learn who killed his mother. When he learns that she isn't dead, he kills her himself.
    • Or: Teenage prodigy rebels against his family, drags the entire world into it.
    • Or: Bored, disaffected young noble is handed absolute power over others, abuses it for great justice.
  • Count Cain: A boy and his butler solve murders and sometimes commit them. Sometimes there are zombies and often there is incest.
  • Cowboy Bebop: Bounty hunters in space barely make enough money to eat properly. The soundtrack is popular.
    • Or: Bounty hunters fight Chinese mafia, but not in space.
    • He's an ex-chinese mafia member turned bounty hunter looking for his girlfriend and wanting to kill his former best friend, he's a hard nosed former cop with a serious chip on his shoulder, she's an attractive amnesiac con-artist with a compulsive gambling problem, she's a mad child prodigy hacker. Together They Fight Crime/ Perpetual Poverty / each other.
    • Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door: A justifiably disgruntled "dead" veteran tries to wipe out humanity by showing them butterflies.
  • Cross Game: Little girl dies in the first episode. Her boyfriend goes on to court her younger sister. Oh, and there's baseball.
  • Crows: High school guys spend their time fighting for the hell of it and then wondering why they can't get girlfriends.
    • Worst: A new generation of high school guys spend their time fighting for the hell of it and then wondering why they can't get girlfriends.
  • Cubex Cursedx Curious: A cursed cube tries to become a human.
  • Cyborg 009: Nine strangers leave their current employer.
    • Alternative: A large mufti-national arms dealer creates perfect killers, but the killers still have hearts and rebel.
    • Alternative: People are kidnapped and experimented on. One scientist part of the project rebels and starts a resistance.
  • Cyborg Kuro Chan: A cat one day woke up and found himself turned into a cyborg by a mad scientist. Hilarity ensues.
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